DAMIEN RICE MUSIC
Rating: ««««
Submitted: 14/08/2002
Reviewer: James Berry

It’s hard to expect all that much from a genre steeped so richly in tradition and built firmly on the foundations of convention and institution. Yeah, it can cast its shards of influence far and wide, but when stripped back to its bare bones Irish folk music seems convinced that it’ll have to apply a sticky plaster if lead too far off course. Now it’s not that Damien Rice has snapped his wooden stool over his knee or anything, it’s still in frame, but he’s not sat on it. Here is a man that delivers tired customs with an exuberance that would shame most genres, and when Gemma Hayes was starting to look like an exciting prospect for similar reasons Damien Rice steps up to proclaim quietly that you’ve just found what you were looking for.

We rarely hear song-writing with such a strong heartbeat, poetry so damningly served up. There are traces of beauty pervading every moment from beginning to end, from the moment he softly questions “why’d you sing hallelujah, if it means nothing to you?” on ‘Delicate’, setting out his apparent philosophy over trickling guitars, through to the distorted impassioned crescendo and subsequent dark massage of its secret track. Imagine David Gray with all the monotony taken out. And locked firmly in a neck brace. This is a record that will not resign itself to regularity even if that’s what must drive the blood round its body.

‘Volcano’ is a heavy, bass-sodden, duel-voiced, devils on your shoulder, settling of the scores tune that finds liberation through its angst. ‘The Blowers Daughter’ evokes memories of the (back when they were alright) Stereophonics’ ‘Billy Davies Daughter’, yet so much sweeter, honest and personal. ‘Cannonball’ falls over itself with grace and ‘Cold Water’ echoes around a wide open space like loneliness itself. If It wasn’t for the occasional lack of surprise here, ‘Eskimo’ and ‘Older Chests’ particularly, this would have been awarded a full 5 stars and probably applied for a larger marking scheme.

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